Dovetail

103 W. 77th St. (212-362-3800)

Dovetail seems at first like a version of Blue Hill transported north. There is the town-house location and discreet entrance, the understated décor, and the menu so emphatically New England in character that several of the ingredients claim to have come over on the Mayflower. Above all, there is the cooking, which never seems to falter. But where Blue Hill maintains earnest simplicity, Dovetail’s chef, John Fraser, indulges a taste for whimsicality, such as pairing skate wing and chicken wing, or deconstructing the New Orleans muffuletta sandwich: the traditional pressed meats and olive salad strewn in little piles across the plate and the bread replaced with two licks of lamb’s tongue, breaded and fried.

Once you start looking, unexpected and inventive touches are everywhere. Fraser enjoys eye-catching matches—cod with cocoa beans, bass with bacon, monkfish with foie gras, oysters with sunchoke and pineapple. A tiny but dietetically deadly beef-cheek lasagna accompanying a sirloin steak was pasta-free, made instead with thin sheets of celery root, parsnip, and potato. But what impresses far more is the attention lavished on less showy details. A dish of white asparagus was remarkable not for its accompaniments of caviar and salmon tartare but because the asparagus came daringly close to overcooked, with a waterlogged deliquescence that remained just this side of mushy. The gnocchi, accompanied by off-the-bone short ribs, were so soft that they more or less reverted to being mashed potatoes.

Many of the restaurant’s well-heeled clientele linger over their plates with the leisurely contentment of those whose children have long left home. On a recent evening, conversation encompassed the Democratic nomination (“There’s no way Hillary can match his beauty”), the gastronomic challenges of the neighborhood, and a brush with greatness (“Eliot Spitzer said to me—this was two days before it broke . . .”). Dovetail has plans to start serving afternoon tea soon, in what one suspects must be a heartless ploy to separate seniors from their savings. The dining room, dark and emphatically frill-less, seems to lack the requisite touch of Miss Marple-style gentility. Besides, is the cucumber sandwich really in urgent need of deconstruction? (Open daily for dinner. Entrées $26-$36.) ♦